


Handed

by fiendingforthesunshine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Clint Barton, Discrimination, Kid Clint Barton, Past Child Abuse, Religious Themes, depending on how you look at it, or current
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendingforthesunshine/pseuds/fiendingforthesunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has always cared about Clint's hands. His father, his mother, the teachers at school, the nuns at the orphanage, Barney, Trick Shot and the Swordsman. Even Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handed

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quick thing I wrote because the other day someone said something about my being left-handed and it reminded me that MCU Clint Barton is ambidextrous which means he had to start with one of his hands and I would bet it would've been his left hand. 
> 
> While this story is a bit extreme it's still not uncommon for people to force kids to be right handed or to generally be weird about the idea of someone being left handed. My mom's dad used to tie her hand down so she'd be forced to use her right hand, a lot sports forced me to play right handed so it would 'make sense', often teachers wouldn't help me when it came to handwriting because 'it's just to hard to teach the wrong hand' and when I was learning sign language I learned with my right hand being dominate for a long time until someone, who was left handed, taught me how do it left handed so I wouldn't constantly be thinking of how to sign "correctly". 
> 
> So I just sort of exemplified all those things and wrote a story. Hope you like it!

When Clint’s Sunday school teacher notes that the three year-old has a tendency to use his left hand his mom starts to quietly correct him every time he reaches out for something with the aforementioned hand, moves the crayon to his right hand, and intentionally never puts his spoon on the left side when they sit down to eat. 

For a while his father doesn’t notice. Until he does. 

He doesn’t make a big deal out of it, surprisingly, although he’s busy making big deals out of even smaller things, like when Clint leaves his toys out or Barney gets in the way of the TV at night when he’s trying to drink his 4th beer. 

The only thing his father says about the whole ‘left-handed business’ is that it’s better they caught it early, although Clint is still a stupid bastard. Clint remembers those words more than he remembers how his mother tried to cover his ears whenever his father started cursing. 

Good thing she didn’t have to cover his ears for very long, Clint thinks. 

At four years old Clint gets so sick that he doesn’t even remember going to the hospital, just remembers waking up one day in a bed that wasn’t his in a room that was extremely quiet. 

Later, at nearly six years old, when Clint knows how to write and when no one is looking, Barney will tell him with a mix of chicken scratch writing and weak home-made signs they shared that he got an infection in his brain and it destroyed his hearing. 

Neither Clint nor Barney think it’s a big deal that Clint has to continue switching the pencil in his hands so he doesn’t use his left hand to write down his response. 

\--

The nuns care a hell of a lot more than his parents did, that’s for sure. 

Once it’s made known that Clint sometimes eats with his left hand (the seats at the dinner tables are so close that Clint can’t help but bump his elbows into the boy sitting next to him), and that he throws footballs and baseballs left-hand when he’s not thinking about it two of the nuns sit him down in the office for a talk. 

They tell him he shouldn’t use his left hand, it’s a sign of the devil; at least he thinks that’s what they’re saying. One of the nuns had a voice that was almost impossible to decipher, even with his hearing aids. 

The next time he slips up, one of the nuns teaching his English class smacks his hands with a ruler. 

The time after that they start tying his hand to the desk so he can’t even attempt to slip up. 

When he and Barney are alone, which isn’t often, Barney lets him draw in his notebooks with whatever hand he wants and despite the fact that Clint is utterly terrified of the nuns he writes with his left hand, his _correct_ hand just to be defiant. If only for himself. 

\--

No one at the circus cares. The lady psychic tells Clint that he’s got a special soul because he can use both of his hands without anyone being able to tell which is the correct one. 

Clint figures she doesn’t know about how much work he put down to make sure that was the case. She’s probably not really psychic anyway. 

No one a the circus cares that he switches hands constantly until the Swordsman from the big-top tells him he should ‘pick a hand for fuck’s sake’ one day when he’s aiming sticks at the guys tearing down one of the side tents to get ready to move. 

“What if I don’t want to?” Clint bites back, his stick hitting one of the men square between the shoulders. 

The man curses at Clint in a language he doesn’t understand and Clint shrugs and sticks his tongue out. 

“Then I guess you don’t want to get out of cleaning up animal shit for the rest of your life,” the Swordsman shrugs his shoulders from where he’s standing, near a tent that’s already been taken down, some of his equipment still being packed into boxes. 

Clint gives him a look, “What do you mean?” 

“You know Trick Shot, right? The archer from the big-top?” Clint nods, “He and I have a plan, and we need an apprentice. We’ve seen your aim, we can make you a star,” the Swordsman throws a smooth rock towards Clint and Clint catches it. 

“What about my brother?” 

“What about him? We only need one, kid.” 

“He’s strong, and he’s picked a hand.” 

The older man sighs and runs his hand through his hair, “Well if you pick a hand we’ll take him too, only if he’s good.” 

Clint picks his left hand, his _correct_ hand just to spite the Sunday school teachers, his parents, and nuns he knows have long since forgotten about him now. 

\--

When Trick Shot, Swordsman and Barney leave him for dead on the side of the road in some godforsaken town in the Midwest they make sure to make him suffer. 

Clint lets his brain phase out while they beat him up, doesn’t even bother fighting them until Swordsman, Jacques (They were almost on a first name basis now, almost), grabs Clint’s left hand and slams it against the pavement. 

Clint’s being held down by Barney and another man that was on the job so he can’t move away with Jacques slams his boot on Clint’s hand. He can feel the bones crunching the first time and cracking the second. 

Barney and Clint catch eyes just before Clint passes out, holding his hand to his chest. 

\--

Clint risks it and goes to a clinic. They put his hand in a cast and tell him to come back in six to eight weeks and to try not to get into any more trouble. 

Instead he finds one of the few guys who has it out for Jacques and his crew (and is willing to actually go after them to get what’s his) and proves his worth. Turns out he never forgot how to use his right hand when it came to shooting and even with his other hand in a cast he starts taking out marks one by one. 

One of the guys in the crew borrows a knife and cuts the cast off him after five weeks and even though Clint’s fingers are still tight and his wrist doesn’t like bending he thanks the guy and goes off to do his next job. 

When SHIELD catches up to them he’s still shooting with his right hand and he’s the last man standing. 

His hearing aids are shot to hell, which is why he doesn’t hear one of the agents come up behind him and grab his nonfunctioning left hand. 

Clint turns with an arrow in his hand, not yet knocked, and plans to aim it at the asshole who grabbed his hand but he slumps to the ground instead, having not noticed he tranquilizer in his neck. Fuck.

\--

He wakes up in a hospital, or what looks like a hospital with a man in a business suit sitting next to him reading the New York Times, occasionally turning the page with his left hand.

Clint waits for the man to talk. 

“We got you new hearing aids, they’re not the best but they’re what we could do on such short notice,” the man doesn’t bother to look up from the newspaper, which is fine because Clint can hear him better than he thinks he’s ever heard anyone, “We also had a surgeon come in and look at your hand. When you switched shooting styles and teams we figured something must’ve happened.” 

Clint blinks, “How can… what… who are you?” 

This time he folds up the paper in his lap, left side over right side, “I’m Phil Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” 

“Ew,” Clint scrunches up his nose at the name.

“We’re working on it,” if the man, Phil Coulson, wasn’t so stoic looking Clint could almost hear a sigh sneak out with his response. 

“We’ve been looking for snipers for a while, marksmen with skills like yours. Our surgeons believe with great certainty that they can fix your hand. When they do we have employment for you, if you want it.”

“I can shoot just fine with my right hand,” Clint mutters. 

“Your shot is great either way but when you shoot with your wrong hand you’re too focused on getting it right, how do you think we were able to get you after years of trying to track you down?” 

Clint just shrugs. 

“Clint Barton, we want you on our side, and we want you on our side the way you’re meant to be.” 

Phil Coulson walks out of the room and Clint stares at where he just was. 

It doesn’t take Clint very long to untangle himself from the sheets, check that he’s not hooked up to any IVs, and follow the man out into the hallway.


End file.
